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(photo: DonkeyHotey/flickr)
If you study the effect of Obama’s stunningly bad debate performance, all the sound and the fury is coming from Obama’s supporters. They are electrified, galvanized… to use Samuel L. Jackson catchy phrase they finally seem to have awakened “the f**K up”.
Take a look at this video from Jon Stewart and you’ll see how electrified and awakened they may have become.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-4-2012/democalypse-2012—o-bama–where-art-thou–pt–2
Thinking this all over and being a firm believer in the Occam’s razor, I am left with only two possible conclusions:
One. Either Obama doesn’t care whether he loses the election or not and didn’t prepare for the debate at all, or…
Two, that he gave exactly the performance he wanted to give in order to generate exactly the response from his heretofore apathetic base that he desired them to have.
The third possibility, that the President tried his best and that was all he could come up with is really too troubling to contemplate at this stage.
Since Obama is known to be obsessively competitive at even the most petty levels, I find it impossible to believe that he just let Romney walk over him. My opinion is that he threw the first debate in order to fire up his dormant base. They are now begging for him to draw blood in the next debate. If he comes out aggressively, nobody, but perhaps Fox News and Matt Drudge, will ever accuse him of being an “angry negro”.
Certainly if Obama gives a sharp and aggressive performance next time, nobody is going to feel sorry for Romney and Obama’s campaign will catch on fire.
The only votes that count in elections are those that are actually cast, apathy is the greatest enemy of the 2012 Obama campaign. Now the possibility of a Romney victory becomes a reality and perhaps that will finally “wake” those 2008 voters up.
27 Comments
More eleventy seven dimensional chess? Please.
No luv, merely gamesmanship.
Whether your theory is true or not, the point you make, that Obama is in danger because of potentially poor turnout is very true.
I recall clearly that W was terrible in the first debate with Kerry, too. And now they say all incumbents Presidents, even Reagan v the grim Mondale, lost his first 1984 debate.
Most be something about having the job….makes it easier on the pretender to the throne.
Although, I read the Democracy Now transcript of the pseudo third party debate and frankly, Rocky Anderson and Jill Stein weren’t exactly winners either.
Clearly, the entire mess can be laid at the feet of Jim Lehrer.
They all sucked.
Call it what you want. I think you give him far too much credit. Maybe partisan Democrats are energized but that performance has arguably lowered his poll numbers and therefore his chances at reelection so it seems to have been more counter productive than anything else. At least from my point of view.
As president he has much more control of the agenda… I’m sure he knew the employment numbers going into the debate, for example. If he is just as hopeless in the second debate then I will apologize to you most humbly.
I know someone who saw Obama live at a rally back in 2008. Apparently the teleprompter cut out, and the man was at a loss for words. Although he is a very good speech delivery guy, if the words are right in front of him, But without the teleprompter, he’s at a loss. He just doesn’t have the gift of being able to think on his feet.
And in watching the debate on Wednesday night, I noticed something I hadn’t thought of before – he doesn’t smile often. Occasionally this sly smile when he thinks he got away with something. But he smiles far less than any of the Old Time Democrats that brought me into the party.
It’s hard to think about JFK, for instance, without there being a smile on his face. Even in very dark hours, like the Cuban Missile crisis. Obama’s self-proclaimed political hero, one Ronald Reagan, was also able to smile. Remember how after being shot up in the lungs by Hinckley, Reagan even quipped to the doctors, as they prepped him for surgery, “I certainly hope none of you are Democrats?”
Remembering 2008, it took him a lot of debates before he learned to be a bit more confrontational. That was one of the biggest observations about Obama early on: Edwards was swinging for the knockout, Hillary was tough as nails, and a timid Obama was trying to be polite and not confront anyone on anything.
Either way, I don’t believe a word he says this time around, so whether he gets it together or not is not a concern of mine. Two compulsive liars that serve the 1%, and a nation of fools pretending we’re being offered a real choice.
I said in my last post:
But the reaction of the base has made me think differently… Up till now they haven’t seem to really have cared… I think Obama is like a pretty girl playing hard to get with his base.
So Obama can be clueless about the future of America (by supporting austerity while ignoring global warming), but he has to be an expert in debate?
I think your on the right tactical thought Dave.
My guess is he threw this one to keep as much of the PAC money on the presidential race, instead of it shifting down ticket.
One of the pundits said that by the next debate, where you and I agree that the O will show up, it will be too late for the PACs to make the sufficient shift to add purchases down ticket. Its a rope-a-dope for the money; to keep R’s funding coming under the assumption that “maybe he is electable after all.”
If O wipes the floor with him next time, R’s two week rejuvenation in the polls will be gone, election over, with down ticket reduced turnout by the Repubs. Dem down ticket performance enhanced.
But all of that is above my pay-grade.
I don’t buy this at all. Obama has no “base” because he has no philosophical beliefs, which is what a political “base” is built upon. Obama’s voters are blindly partisan Democrats, Obama cultists and Blue Dog Conservatives and they are all voting for him no matter what.
The Emperor has no clothes.
4. Obama could have been overconfident. He is human, after all. If he puts on a better performance in the second debate, Occam’s Razor would lead me to conclude that he was recovering from his mistakes, not that he deliberately threw the first debate as part of a master plan. Throwing a debate is a very risky way to fire up your base.
I don’t buy it. In all the years this country has existed we have yet to have a leader that is even half as clever as you attribute to Obama.
Calculating and self serving yes. Clever no.
The third possibility, that the President tried his best and that was all he could come up with is really too troubling to contemplate at this stage.
That’s the most plausible explanation, but think it’s even worse than that: his performance is the result of spending three years and change inside a bubble and being too in love with himself to admit faults. I expect him to stink up the joint in Debates #2 and #3 as well.
Dave Lindorff:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/05/obamas-tactical-retreat/
The best Obama debate review I’ve read is by Matt Stoller:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/10/post-debate-analysis-the-media-can-now-get-the-electoral-horse-race-it-wants.html#h0QbDvGl6FvjGAjE.99
Sorry, I’m not sure about nice, likeable guy. More like a guy who couldn’t be bothered to engage or just didn’t give a damn.
What Obama was up to is effectively explained by cmaukonen today at “Where the Left and the Right get it wrong on Obama…”
Highly recd
I will grant one – and only one- thing. It obviously would have been folly to raise the 47% remarks, only to give Romney a 68 million person audience for an etch a sketch, especially since he was proving so effective at the big lie. But literally failing to swing at a single of many, many softballs? Only plausible explanation, given the four year record, is deep cognitive dissonance, both intellectual (he agrees with Romney) and psychological. again see cmaukonen…
I am voting 3rd party but here is my opinion; I think Matt Stoller and what I read from cmaukonen are pretty much correct. Obama is a right wing (sort of moedrate) president who the Dems or GOP supporters are willing to admit this truth. Obama has dome a lousy job at fixng these porbelsm from a populist POV but from the right wing corpate Dem POV is a great.
The “debates” come down to two candidates who think and talk alike; two candidates who pander to the .1% who have to lie in order to get people to vote for them. When Obama faced McCain he had no real track record and while McCain tried to blow smoke he is not good at BSing but Romney can lie with the best of them.
Obama can’t run on his record becuase it sucks he can’t run on “vote for me becuase I am not as right wing as Mitt”. Obama knows the people want SS; Medicare and jobs they want the govt to stand up the the banks they want the wars to end but he has no plans to do any of it. Romney is just the better liar
I am ranting a bit here but I think I made my point
I need to proof read…I meant Dems and GOP suppoters are NOT willing to admit the truth
good lord! I also need to spell check! I am flagging myself for poor writing skills! :)
Or here is another theory for his poor performance, he sucks at debating. Obama is good at reading the teleprompter and giving rehearsed speeches, speaking quickly and spontaneously have never been his strong suit. That is bad enough, but combine his sense of entitlement, arrogance, and natural timidness when confronted by those who disagree with him and you get the disaster we saw the other nite. You cld tell he obviously had not prepared as well as he shldve and Romney made him pay. He is lucky that the jobs report was positive bcz if not he wld be behind today. Most Americans ( except the Maddow and Sharpton types) got a chance to see their president in action and they did not like what they saw.
I haven’t noticed that Obama is timid with those who disagree with him —- ask any progressive who has tried getting his attention. But even if he is —- I’m not convinced he’s in disagreement with Romney on most issues so that wouldn’t explain his timidity.
What is curious is that we elected someone like this to begin with. From what I can see, Obama seems to be the way he has always been. I’d like to see an analysis of why all those people who fell in love in 2008 are now asking if they could possibly afford a divorce? This story of the bad debate is really about something else, not the man but the blind belief in this man —- a man, who as greensin2012 pointed out, has no political beliefs of his own. We should be asking questions about ourselves, not him.
Obama is a talking head with a hypnotic voice. Got to love the way his fans twist themselves into pretzels to defend him, even from himself.
That is called denial. Perhaps we need to contemplate exactly that. My conclusion after watching for nearly 6 years, and going back to check his recored is that O is just a front-man, and like the last resident of the WhiteHouse, is directed by his handlers. Unlike this predecessor, he is not prone to go off-script and has no illusion that he is the decider. But, as we have noticed, does go kind of quiet without a teleprompter.
I began to wonder about him well before the primaries when I looked up his record. His vote to immunize the telcos tore it for me. He could have missed that one like he did hundreds of others, he could have voted against it b/c his vote was not needed. That day he showed who his allegience was to. I have not been surprised by what he has done subsequently, although astonished by the speed and scale.
oh damn, that’s not hpschd, it’s HotFlash commenting above, I forgot I was on my dh’s computer.